"My lady," Faramir said, his voice cutting through the stillness of the air, a faint echo rising from the cold white walls surrounding the garden.
Éowyn responded in kind. "My lord." She did not look up from what she sat on the marble bench, nor did her fingers stop their twisting of the folds of skirt in her lap.
"May I?" he said, a rough, indefinable emotion catching at his voice.
"If you want," she said tonelessly.
"That is no answer at all," he said, but he seated himself nonetheless.
"What answer can I give?" she said, and he had no reply.
"Did you wish something of me?" she asked at last, when the sun had begun to fade beneath the rim of the world, and the wispy clouds were stained a deep purple.
"I would ask you to marry me," he said evenly.
There was a bitter smile in her voice. "Do you know whom you would have?" she said.
"The White Lady of Rohan," he said. "You need not fear, my lady. I have no misconceptions that I will have Éowyn."
"That is well," she said.
"I do not seek love," he said, rushing, as if the words tumbled forth of their own accord. "I have never tasted of love, and I do not believe I ever shall - there is a grief that lies on my heart and in the river Anduin. I ask your hand only because you understand what such grief is, and because both of us must marry, must carry on our names."
She sat silently, head bowed, her hands stilled at last. The icy chill of the stone bench sank beneath his cloak and clothing, and his hands felt numb and cold.
"It is better this way," he went on, "only us, knowing already that we need not keep up a pretense of love."
One bright crystal bead fell to her lap, trailing from the long strands of her hair and then spinning through the air, painted blood-red in the sunset behind them.
"I have nothing to offer you," he said. "There is a title and comforts and land, but they are all nothing compared to what we have lost, the both of us. There is just a broken man, and a respite from marriage, and perhaps, sometimes, if you wish it, a kindred heart."
She lifted her chin defiantly, her lips so pressed together that they were white and bloodless. "Then, my lord, you should know what I have to offer you," she said, her voice tight with fury, and yet uncertain, as if he was not meant to be the target of her wrath. "You will have a token bride, Lord Faramir, and a mother to to your heirs, for such is my duty, and you will have, my lord, a wife who will always love another man. Is that enough for you?"
"Peace," he said, daring to cover one of her hands with his own. "It is enough."
But she wrenched her hand away. "I do not love you, Lord Faramir," she said, and now her rage was barely suppressed. "You know it, and that is why I will marry you, so let it always be so between us," she said. And then, in a whisper so soft he could barely hear it, and he was unsure whether she meant to speak it aloud at all, she murmured, "I could not bear it to love again."
"Come," he said, rising, shaking out his cloak. "Come. Let us tell those who would weep for us if we died, let us tell them of our marriage."
She, too, rose, stiffly, as if she had been sitting there all day. She followed him away from the garden, to the white stone walls and marble towers, to the great city of Minas Tirith.
Above them, the sun had let go its last light, but the stars had not yet appeared.